What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Surely this has happened to you as often as me. You’re at a picnic or buffet and you’re trying to juggle your beer and fill your plate with food. At such times, you wish you had a third hand. So while searching the other day for another image, I stumbled upon this on a Tumblr blog, but there was no original link or any information about it; just the picture below:
So at first glance, it seems like a good idea. With the plastic tray over the bottle, you’d have one hand free to load up on food. But thinking about it a few seconds longer, and it’s not the panacea it first appears to be.

So I ask. What’s wrong with this picture? Well first of all, you shouldn’t be drinking straight from the bottle, though the plate wouldn’t work with most beer glasses, which taper up rather than down. You might be able to put a pint glass upside down over the top of the bottle, but it doesn’t look like the opening in the plastic tray is wide enough to accommodate it then.

But even assuming you were drinking straight from the bottle — perhaps you’re at a picnic in a park and have no choice — wouldn’t it be easy to forget about the food and take a swig, and in the process dump all the food on the ground? But maybe it’s just useful to load up on the food in the buffet line and carry it a spot where you can sit and eat with your beer. Either way, what looks to be the solution to we’ve all had countless times may not quite solve it after all. What do you think? Boom or bust?

As it is clearly a Budweiser bottle in the pic (bow tie) I think we’re clearly the wrong audience for this product. The best solution, as always, is to have the girlfriend carry the beer while you fill your plate. 🙂
Or never leave the house. That’s probably safer.

I have seen a similarly inspired multi-tool at wine events. It looks like an artists board, with a hole through it on one side for your thumb, for a secure grip. On the other side it has a “c” shaped opening to hang your wine glass off of. I think it is really a pretty brilliant solution. Both force serial consumption of your food and drink, rather than parallel consumption. That’s the normal method anyways, so I don’t see a problem 🙂

1. BikerAggie is right on about the wine event multi-tool; I bought some in the 80’s when I was going annually to the now-extinct KQED Wine & Food Festival.

2. If you’re outside in warm weather, your beer, assuming it’s in a dark brown bottle, will stay cooler in the bottle than it would in a clear glass. If you insist on drinking beer out of a glass, keep it small & away from a direct sun hit, & keep the bottle out of a direct sunlight hit. I drink before/after I eat, rarely while eating (the opposite from my childhood, when I washed damned near every bite w/a slug of milk).